Prosecutors will attempt to establish a ‘terrorism connection’ against seven Palestine Action activists charged with malicious damage over a protest at Donald Trump’s Turnberry golf course in Scotland.
The seven appeared at the High Court in Glasgow on the 28th for a first hearing.
They are Autumn Taylor Ward, Dylan Chiaramello, Ricky Southall, Kieran Robson, Rebecca Sian Davies, Uzma Bashir and John Moxley.
The protest took place on 8th March 2025, weeks after Trump proposed a US-led take-over of the Gaza Strip.
Activists entered the Ayrshire course and sprayed ‘Gaza is not 4 sale’ across the lawn, applied weed killer to the grass and daubed the clubhouse in red paint.
The charge is malicious damage.
‘The prosecution will seek to establish a “terror connection”, to enable terror sentences to be imposed on the defendants even though the prosecution has chosen not to charge them with any terror offences,’ the campaign group Defend Our Juries said.
The group also said Trump held two telephone calls with the then Prime Minister Keir Starmer after the protest.
Trump described the protesters as terrorists on Truth Social at the time.
In May 2025, the Scottish terrorism board reached the opposite conclusion, finding that the protest had not come close to meeting the statutory definition of terrorism.
Palestine Action was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in Britain two months later, in July 2025, a decision that has since produced more than 3,500 arrests under terrorism legislation of people holding placards bearing a seven-word sign.
Questions over whether the American president shaped that decision have run alongside the proscription since it was made, and were sharpened last Wednesday when Trump’s own administration designated Palestine Action a terrorist group and announced it would sanction any members based in the United States.
A Defend Our Juries spokesperson said: ‘It’s now all too clear why the White House has designated Palestine Action as a global terror organisation, alongside Al Qaeda.
‘It’s because members of Palestine Action upset the president in March 2025 by making a mess of his golf course.’
Labour MP John McDonnell said the government had serious questions to answer over the allegations of political interference by Trump.
‘It would be utterly shameful if the British government launched an unprecedented attack on free speech in our country, resulting in more than 3,500 people being arrested under terrorism laws for peacefully holding seven-word signs, because Donald Trump threw a tantrum over some red paint on his golf course,’ he said.
The media reported the terms of the prosecution’s approach.
The same American designation swept up a stateless Palestinian refugee living in Berlin and two other organisations linked to Europe.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control placed Zaid Abdulnasser, aged 30, on the list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons as one of two alleged leaders or officials of Masar Badil.
Autistici Inventati was named alongside Palestine Action and Masar Badil.
The designation was made under Executive Order 13224, signed by George W Bush after the September 11th attacks.
The Treasury described Masar Badil as a front organisation for the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, sanctioned by Washington in October 2024.
Samidoun, the department says, is controlled by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, on the American terrorist list since 1997.
The press release states: ‘Masar Badil is inextricably linked with Samidoun and described by one of its senior leaders as part of the same political project.’
It added that the organisations ‘share fundraising mechanisms as well as senior leaders and members of their respective Executive Committees’.
Abdulnasser, who has a six-month-old child, learned of the designation when friends sent him the press release.
In an interview he said: ‘I was frightened.
‘The authorities did not contact me beforehand, they just put me on the list.’
The sanctions have no binding force in Germany, but their practical effect may be severe.
Financial institutions dealing with him risk secondary sanctions from the United States and may close his accounts.
Because global payment networks run through American banks and dollar transactions, he said the measures threaten to ‘completely paralyse’ him.
He does not read the listing as an attack on him personally.
He said: ‘On this list are Palestine Action, (International Criminal Court) judges, and Palestinian resistance factions.
‘My listing is part of a broader attempt to crush the Palestinian liberation struggle and protect the Israeli occupation from prosecution.’
Born in Syria and a refugee in Berlin since 2017, Abdulnasser has been a target of the German state before.
In October 2023, as the assault on Gaza escalated, the German-Israeli Society called for Samidoun to be banned.
Abdulnasser was one of the group’s coordinators in Germany, and migration authorities had already opened an examination of whether to strip him of refugee status over alleged extremist activities.
Interior minister Nancy Faeser banned the German branch in November 2023, arguing that it had expressed support for the attacks of October 7th.
Legal proceedings challenging that ban were listed for 2025 and have still not concluded.
Masar Badil was founded in 2021. Its website describes one of its aims as strengthening the part played by the Palestinian diaspora in the national liberation movement, and its activities have included conferences, events and rallies. Abdulnasser declined to comment on whether he is involved in it.
His lawyer, Alexander Gorski, said they are examining ways to challenge the American sanctions and believes German and American authorities exchanged information.
‘Mr Abdulnasser has not committed a criminal offence. And nobody is accusing him of that,’ Gorski said, adding: ‘This is about legal political activity, mainly for Palestinian prisoners.’
The Treasury press release cites the 2026 US Counterterrorism Strategy, which names violent left-wing extremists as a leading threat to national security.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated: ‘Far-left extremists, their fronts, and their enablers should be on notice.
‘We will bring the full weight of our economic tools to bear.’
Gorski put the designation in the same frame. ‘This is clearly linked to the US government’s crackdown on the left,’ he said.
Abdulnasser has a court date approaching at which a decision is expected on whether his refugee status in Germany will be revoked, a step that could open the way to his deportation.
The sequence in Scotland runs the other way round from the usual order of things.
Paint was thrown at a golf course owned by the American president. The president called it terrorism.
The Scottish body charged with assessing such claims found it was nothing of the kind.
The organisation was proscribed in Britain anyway, thousands were arrested for holding signs, and the White House then designated the same organisation and reached across the Atlantic to a refugee in Berlin who has been accused of no crime in any jurisdiction.